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- 2x MVP.
- 5x All-WNBA (4x First Team).
- 7x All-star.
- Member of the W25 (top 25 WNBA players of all-time).
- 2013 ROY
- 2015 Scoring champ
- Led Washington to the finals twice and won a championship.
- Best free throw shooter in professional basketball history (all due respect to Steph Curry and Steve Nash).
- Battled lyme disease her entire career.
- Had her prime cut short by covid and then injuries.
- Despite playing squarely during the primes of Maya Moore, Candace Parker, and Diana Taurasi, EDD had several seasons where she was considered the best player in the league.

Was wondering if she was goin to give it one last shot.

cdubbz wrote:Was wondering if she was goin to give it one last shot.

Yeah, when I saw a "breaking news" image with her picture, I was hoping it was news of a signing/comeback, that she was joining a contender for a final run. Joining the Mercury or Aces or something. But alas, it's not to be. Post-pandemic EDD always looked like she was playing through a lot of pain. Happy for her to move on to the next phase of her life.

She's from my hometown Wilmington,DE and I had the chance to meet her on a few occasions. Nothing but respect

She had an issue with lyme disease right? i remember something about that coming up when she played in Chicago.

jc23 wrote:She had an issue with lyme disease right? i remember something about that coming up when she played in Chicago.

Yeah, she wrote a pretty wild Players Tribune article about it. She had to take 64 pills a day to be able to play professional basketball with the disease. She was also really angry at the league for not giving her a medical exception during the bubble. Honestly, a lot of her career sounds pretty difficult and torturous.
https://www.theplayerstribune.com/articles/elena-delle-donne-wnba-season-lyme-disease

EDD is going to be on the Bird-Taurasi broadcast

cupcakesnake wrote:- Best free throw shooter in professional basketball history (all due respect to Steph Curry and Steve Nash).

Thanks for profiling EDD ccs! She was perhaps a GOAT-level talent, with a career hampered a great deal unfortunately.

I wanted to hammer in the free throws because I think this is really noteworthy.

All-time NBA career 90+ FT% (NBA):

Elena Delle Donne 93.70%
Steph Curry 91.11%
Sabrina Ionescu 90.58%
Steve Nash 90.43%
Mark Price 90.39%

The gap between EDD and everyone else is really quite huge.

When she was coming up as a HS player she used to routinely DESTROY local high school boys who had offers to play D-1 college when she would scrimmage vs them. Like actually flat out embarrass dudes who would go on to play A-10 ball with her combo of shooting/size/footwork. I've still not seen anything like that with any women's player who has come around since.

Doctor MJ wrote:
I wanted to hammer in the free throws because I think this is really noteworthy.

All-time NBA career 90+ FT% (NBA):

Elena Delle Donne 93.70%
Steph Curry 91.11%
Sabrina Ionescu 90.58%
Steve Nash 90.43%
Mark Price 90.39%

The gap between EDD and everyone else is really quite huge.

She missed only 75 free throws her entire career, on 1190 attempts. That's insane. She was a pretty high volume free throw shooter as well (7 attempts per game in her first MVP season).

It gets even sillier in the playoffs. 95.4%. She missed 7 times in her entire playoff career (153 attempts). This breaks my brain.

EDD gave the game everything that she had and then more. She went through a lot man i hope she is okay and enjoys retirement.